Dyre Straits

I found it interesting recently -- when reading one of my favorite magazines -- that the tech guru of that magazine made this statement: "You're wasting your time to defrag."

Now, of course, we're talking about Defragmenting the HDD/s of your PC.

For years it's been my own personal practice to Defrag at least about once per month. At least I check the status of my drives to see if the Diagnostics tell me that I should or shouldn't do so.

Anyway, within the same issue of this magazine, there was a column that completely contradicted the 'in house guru' and said that Defragging the HD is an essential function and should be done about once a month or so.

When the 'in house guru' was called on the carpet about this contradiction, he restated his position and simply repeated: "You're wasting your time Defragging the HD."

So, what's your own opinion and practice re: Defragmenting of the HDD/s on your system?

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Vikingod

Absolutely, I defrag mine at least weekly, and always after a major install/removal of software. Monthly I defrag the system files, or after I install/unistall major system software. I notice performance improvements with a driver that is defragmented, especially when it comes to loading something large (ie. games, large files). The idea that some "guru" says its a waste of time is pretty shocking.

niceguyrichy

I voted for occasionally, cos I don't do it as often as I really should. still do pretty regularly though (it's almost like those folk who say that they don't need to virus scan cos they never look at pr0n or some shit like that to say you don't need to defrag)

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DudeBoyz

I don't do it as much as I used to.

Part because I have so many physical drives in my system, and also have my OS on a dedicated partition away from many of the data files.

Also, with the huge hard drives, defragging takes way, way longer than back in the day.

OmegaRED

Every few days because I'm short on space and do a lot of installs, file transfers and downloading.

Used to use O&O Defrag Pro but I found Diskeeper is better it lets you defrag the pagefile, MFT and provides some more usefull analysis so you can decide if it's worth defraging.

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mkk

I have to say the built-in defrag routine in Vista is really good enough for me. By default, once a week it does a defragmentation run of all harddrives. It avoids unecessary defragmentation of files with smaller than 64MB fragments, and does not consolidate the free space on the entire volume. Those are actions that would often have made a defragmentation run take a lot longer without really improving performance. Instead it carries out a little smart maveouvering of system files according to access priority, much like in XP but with the benefit of Vista's much better I/O handling when doing this unobtrusively in the background.

Increase the defrag frequency in the Task Scheduler as desired. Carry out a complete defrag every other month or so if you feel like it. And try a third party utility for the more "troubleshooting" type of operations, if ever necessary.

savak

Since I found this defrag program by Auslogics
http://www.download.com/3001-2094_4-10658208.html

I'm defraging once a week. It's fast, free and I can feel the diffrence.

DudeBoyz

I like Raxco Perfect Disk with the AGGRESSIVE FREESPACE CONSOLIDATION option. Best job I've seen so far.

Necrosis

Once a week after my spyware scans.

zaim

i use O&O but i'm gonna give that free one a shot

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temeteus82

My Norton 360 has defragmentation feature so it does it two times in a week. And some times I run PerfectDisk.

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zaim

just took me 10 mins to defrag my raid0 array using that auslogics program

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RoyBatty

I run defrag mostly after removing or installing programs.

RaveneR

i defrag whenever my comps feels slows, dont defrag regularly though, as you wont be noticing much difference between the before and after...

Zelig

Randomly, when I'm in the mood. I don't notice any difference.

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Lowfat

Just so you know, O&O can do all those also.

I use to do it daily Had O&O setup to do it everynight. It would only take a few minutes if done everyday. Have gotten lazy lately and haven't set anything up. But still do it once a week.

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CDsDontBurn

yes, occasionally

up until recently, i never had all the free space required (15% minimum) to defrag my HDDs so i could never defrag unless i got rid of some data. But when space is available, i'll defrag every once in a while.

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dipstick

I try to do it once a week including boot defrags when recommended. Been using perfectdisk for as long as I can remember and the difference is most noticeable over windows defrag

PangingJr

was there any explanation at all from the in house guru?
if there was no explanation for the statement being there, or there was one but did not make sense either,
then, i think, there is no real guru there, probably just a fake guru.
if he didn't know what he was taking (as you seem to think), how can he call himself a guru of that?

btw, i voted the Yes, occasionally (when using Vista)

CDsDontBurn

i just had a thought about this particular article.

if the magazine this article is in was the april release, i think that this particular article was printed out as an april fool's joke

anybody else think the same thing?

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technonerd

I defrag monthly, used Diskeeper.

Erroneus

I just defragged my SD card on my PDA :P

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DudeBoyz

Man, I freakin' HATE April Fools day stuff. What a drag.

Dyre Straits

Actually, this particular magazine is one I've been reading for over three years now. I actually enjoy reading the problems that have been posted and this guy's responses to them. He's really 'dead on' most of the time. But, he has an ornery streak in him and he does his replies with some insults most of the time. However, it's 'tongue-in-cheek' type insults and people feel they haven't been treated properly if they haven't been raked over the coals royally by him.

Anyway, I did miss the original article where he did say that it's a waste of time to Defrag the hard drive. That's one issue I couldn't get my hands on while the store was going through remodeling. So, I'd have missed this whole thing if it weren't for the person who wrote to call him on the carpet about the conflict with the other article.

AND, this was all written long before April.

I'll do some digging and see if I can come up with any other type of explanation from him as to why he believes it's a waste of time.

Stay tuned....

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Judas

damn straight, defrag the HD's at least once a week keeps the system running smoothly PLUS, doing it that often usually results in a defrag taking only a few minutes IF that, instead of quite a few minutes to even an hour or better

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Vampyromaniac

I was beginning to wonder if there's any point in defragging before, too. I defrag maybe once every couple/few months, just if it ever pops in my head. I don't notice any difference really between before and after defragging, I don't know if it's because modern hard drives are so fast, or what. I guess there's a few other people like me, too.

(I use Windows and/or O&O Defrag. I do have all my data in separate partitions, though.)

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Just Learnin'

Anyone familiar with this free method? http://forums.hardwarelogic.com/f32/...-0-a-4486.html

Pluvious

I defrag all the time. I used to do it manually every few weeks, but since I bought Diskeeper 10.. I have it automaticly defrag when my screensaver starts.. very cool program and I ALWAYS have a 'fresh' system now. Great program.

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Da_Jewish_Fonzy

I play alot of games, installing games and drivers and removing them plus I download large files and remove them frequently. So I defrag around once per 5 days or so. I notice a boost in gaming performance for sure.

Vampyromaniac

Well did a quick test, 37 days since last defrag. Boot time tested with bootvis. Before defrag: 46.73 s. After defrag: 46.35 s. And as usual no noticeable difference in regular usage. Meh.

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